uDevGames 2009 Discussion

Lets dig in while the remains of uDevGames 2008 are still warm and twitching.

We should start uDevGames 2009 today, allow for the year long dev times, all the deadlines are the same as UDG 2008.

Allow people to re-enter the same games and don't limit anyone's dev time, until the deadline.

Keep the open source thing going.

Set up uDevGames forums for the games so people can log on and get the games, and comment on them, keep running polls for votes, so we'll have an all time score.

Start a whole new round of scoring on the same date next year.
So the winners are "this years winners!" for all new entries.

Make the games available outside the forums for that period,
and grab your 'public' vote as usual.

We give prizes to randomly picked forum registered voters.
So we have something to pump the non developers up because
free games alone just isn't the same draw it used to be.

There should probably be tags of some kind the public
can click to vote for what they liked best about a particular game.

Rather than to 1 to 10 for all categories, just 1 to 10 for overall, and one additional pick from many categories.

There can be a group of winners in a 'most votes for category', prize hand out.
That may be the top MMO, 2D, 3D, Characters, plot, technology, iPhone, or browser based games.

Throw the whole "mac os x application bundle only" rule out the door.

If uDevGames is a place where Mr. Browser Based MMO Text Adventure can actually get past asking how to do it, then we'll have source code and a game to show the next guy who comes along and asks how to do it.

iPhone games have to be in for the win if the contest is going to stay relevant.

If we get 10 browser based games, thats 10 browser based games that can draw traffic to uDevGames year over year without forcing them to leave the site to figure out what to do with those games.

I think we have to encourage more complete games, and generally half the games are complete for any given contest, they are in a few steps into beta.

"Complete games" meaning giving gamers exactly what they want and being marketable on the day people download it. I can't say I reached 10% of what my game should be. Its a prototype at best.

Think of uDevGames as Inkubator without restricting that concept to just one game.

It will give us a chance to learn from the source code and
push something like Reclaimed to a LaserFace level.

Obviously there should be a "best UDG source code copy/paste ever!" category to vote for.

So in summary use the uDevGames site for supporting the entries year round, talk code at idevgames as usual, pull entry quality up to their greatest potentials, include more mac gaming source options, continue some of these games with a goal of winning a total victory.

Thats what I'd like to see solving some of the issues that have followed the contest around.

I think it would be a good idea to talk about future contests now, while the most recent one is still fresh in our minds. Essentially, a postmortem for uDevGames 2008 - overall, what went right, what went wrong, and what to change for next time.

One of the biggest problems to me seemed to be a lack of preparation. Official deadlines were missed, the uDevGames site is a total kludge, and rule changes were made well after the contest was underway. Let's get these details worked out much earlier. If we have a really slick site, stay on top of things much more aggressively, and resolve debates more quickly and actively, we can help restore some of the credibility that's been lost.

I totally agree with ThemsAllTook, and a postmortem for the uDevGames 08 contest would be great!

I think we should defiinitely try to get uDevGames 09 out the door ASAP (im talking maybe June, July and August) and keep it yearly from that point on. As uDG 08 kind of got stuck in the middle of winter but it was hard to keep up with working on the game as 2 months of it was durring school (Near finals Dec 2-19, Winter break [worked perfectly], Jan 20-Feb [classes began again]) so it was hard to keep working on my entry.. which received very low scores (and I know why but still makes me feel a little bad...) anyway

ss2cire Wrote:I totally agree with ThemsAllTook, and a postmortem for the uDevGames 08 contest would be great!

I think we should defiinitely try to get uDevGames 09 out the door ASAP (im talking maybe June, July and August) and keep it yearly from that point on. As uDG 08 kind of got stuck in the middle of winter but it was hard to keep up with working on the game as 2 months of it was durring school (Near finals Dec 2-19, Winter break [worked perfectly], Jan 20-Feb [classes began again]) so it was hard to keep working on my entry.. which received very low scores (and I know why but still makes me feel a little bad...) anyway

lets see what we can get going ASAP!

I strongly disagree with holding another contest so soon. It would be crying wolf, in a way. We need time to fall back and regroup, and get a certain other project moving. (Don't ask.)

Actually, this has been a major beef I've had with uDG since it started years ago. I know people think there's some kind of special equalizing force behind being rushed to produce a brand-spankin-new game in two or three months, which no one has heard about but... I have *dozens* of old games in my old dev archive which no one knows exist, which I could whip out and compete with. What's the point of having that requirement? I mean, you put in the work to get to where you're at, regardless of how many months you've been cranking away at it. Devs that have something real special aren't going to be entering in a contest anyway since they'll be selling the product. That's why I think it'd make more sense that people don't use prior existing commercial [edit] scratch that, make it *distributed* [/edit] products instead, as a requirement. So what if they use uDG to promote their product, isn't that what the contest is all about in the first place? You have to release the source anyway.

Because the contest isn't about making Halo 4. It's about giving new Devs a deadline to work within so they actually get something done and learn what all stages of the dev process are about. That's what I like about uDevGames, anyway.

I'm talking about a project that I worked on for a while that's been sitting in my dev folder which is basically finished but I've never distributed, and at this point have no plans to distribute, but I'd like to enter it because I think it's cool. I have several of those, and they are certainly not Halo.

I mean, it just seems silly to me. You don't want to see my code? That's cool, then I won't play. That's what I've said to myself every year since the contest started. With the things I gotta do in my "real life", I don't have time to drink Mountain Dew 24/7 for three months on the schedule of the contest, and pretend I'm 24 again.

I'm just saying that I think this particular rule excludes folks such as myself who might be able to contribute something useful.

OTOH, you have guys with existing code-bases which were allowed to enter and they placed very high in the contest. I dunno, I just think it's an awkward rule.